BASEBALL: SPRING TRAINING 1999

BASEBALL: SPRING TRAINING 1999; Valentine, Grinning and Grimacing in the Glare of the Spotlight

By JACK CURRY

Published: February 15, 1999

STAMFORD, Conn.—
Strolling into Bobby Valentine's Sports Gallery Cafe on Main Street here is like opening a gigantic scrapbook of his life. There are newspaper clippings about a national dance competition he won at 13, about how he consumed 120 pancakes in college to win another contest and, of course, about his accomplishments as a major league baseball player, including frame-by-frame shots of him crashing into a center-field fence and fracturing his right leg and, ultimately, his career.

In the bar, where the walls are adorned with sports magazine covers, there is a shrine to Valentine's high school football exploits. Encased in a glass frame are about two dozen recruiting letters that the running back at Rippowam High School received from the top college football teams in the nation.

Valentine is a hero here. That is especially true in this restaurant, where waiters and waitresses wear Mets jerseys bearing Valentine's No. 2, pictures of him are everywhere and, periodically, Valentine himself is there as owner, ambassador and manager. He is always a manager.

''This is a great day, isn't it?'' he gushed as he sat in a corner booth beneath an autographed Stan Musial jersey one day last week. ''I love days where I've got a lot to do.''

Valentine likes to be busy and he likes to be liked, and he found both work and love here. No one in the restaurant asked if Valentine had anything to do with the dismissal of the Mets announcer Tim McCarver this month. If there were comments about it, they were simply to reiterate Valentine's opinion that the theory was ludicrous.

No one asked about Valentine's poor relationship with Todd Hundley. If there were observations offered about it, they were made on the side of the man known here as Boss.

No one questioned why he used Mel Rojas against Paul O'Neill, who subsequently hit a three-run homer, last June, and it would be hard to find anyone here who believes that he glared at the press box after the left-hander Bill Pulsipher allowed a hit to O'Neill the next day.

This is home, and Valentine is temporarily away from Flushing, Queens, and the spotlight that he seems to need.

''I'm thrown into the middle of everything that happens,'' Valentine said. ''I don't think that's where I am. I'm a manager. I care about everything that is involved with my group. I accept rather than control.''

A Confounding, Lasting Reputation

Fred Wilpon, the Mets' president, said it was sometimes fair and sometimes unfair to depict Valentine as intimately involved in every decision the team made. Then Wilpon added, ''Maybe winning will get that off his back.''

The tanned Valentine was obviously relaxed on this day. He feigned a frown when asked some personal questions, but then freely discussed what he called the misconceptions about him, about his inability to muzzle himself and about his failure to reach the post-season in 1,541 games as a manager. As confident as Valentine is -- and he is extremely confident as he approaches his third full season as the Mets' manager -- a smidgen of insecurity is also evident.

''I don't like to speculate, but there are people who have decided that they have worked too hard at trying to make me look how they want me to look,'' he said. ''I don't know why they waste time doing it. I'm not the greatest guy in the world or an angel, and I'm not the worst guy in the world or the Devil. It's better to write the bad side because the good side is not news. I understand it and it's confusing. I'm trying to figure that out.''

Al Leiter is also trying to figure it out. He said he was guarded when the Marlins traded him to the Mets because Kevin Brown, who played under Valentine in Texas, warned him that the manager ignored slumping players. But Leiter said he had not witnessed ''the bad stuff'' he had heard about and called it ''a complete joy'' to play for Valentine.

''Where Bobby gets a bad rap is people don't know him and he doesn't let them into his world,'' Leiter said. ''There are worse managers than him, believe me. I told him that he needs to hire a p.r. firm. Something's not right. He's not getting his message out. Some people don't like him.''

Trying to figure Valentine out is a pastime of many people in and around baseball. Even Valentine acknowledges he can be confusing.

''There are some people he doesn't like, and some people who don't like him,'' said Joe Valentine, Bobby's father, a retired carpenter. ''You live with it.''

Bobby Valentine is a complex man who is designing two computer Web sites and is comfortable calling for the hit-and-run with a pitcher batting. He has a brilliant baseball mind and is eager to mold the new-look Mets and surpass last season's victory total of 88, but the 48-year-old with the graying hair and nonstop smile is often one comment or curious action away from obscuring what his well-prepared teams do.

Indeed, even Valentine conceded there had been six to eight incidents that had tarnished his two-plus seasons with the Mets. Whenever anything occurs with the Mets these days, there is a tendency to wonder what role Valentine played in it. Did he help get McCarver banished as a Mets announcer after 16 years? Why did Valentine ever publicly discuss Hundley's sleeping and drinking habits? Did he undermine Joe McIlvaine, the former general manager whose exit he discussed with reporters before the news conference to announce it? Some angst could have been avoided if Valentine had kept quiet.